


flowers that bloom in the nighttime

by Ellerigby13



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, The Mandalorian (TV), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bisexuality, Domestic Fluff, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Kidnapping, Pining, SHIELD Agent Darcy Lewis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:55:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24012442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellerigby13/pseuds/Ellerigby13
Summary: Darcy Lewis is a simple SHIELD agent, hopelessly in love with another SHIELD agent: one with sparkling eyes like glass and biceps like an Olympian.  In between delivery missions and convincing Jane that she and Poe Dameron are meant for each other, it's time to figure out how the hell to tell Cara Dune how she feels.Happy May the Fourth!(Written before Gina Carano outed herself as a transphobic right-wing asshole.  I do not agree with her views, her hate, or any of the other gross behavior that she has displayed in recent times.)
Relationships: Cara Dune/Darcy Lewis, Jane Foster & Darcy Lewis, Poe Dameron & Finn, Poe Dameron/Jane Foster
Comments: 8
Kudos: 20
Collections: Darcyverse May the Fourth Be With You





	flowers that bloom in the nighttime

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for checking this out! May the Force be with you all :)

  1. dion & the belmonts



Her first mission with Cara Dune is the transportation of an alien child from one SHIELD base to another. The little guy is damn near the cutest thing Darcy Lewis has ever seen, and she feels like that meme set of Rosa Diaz from Brooklyn Nine-Nine where, if anything happened to The Child, she’d kill everyone in the room and then herself.

Except that means murdering Cara Dune first, which is not necessarily something she’s prepared to do.

Cara is prickly at first. Darcy doesn’t know much about her, other than the fact that Sam Wilson is the one who recruited her from a unit he’d belonged to in the military. She is about six inches taller than Darcy, and packed with muscle so thick Darcy’s sure she could crush her with a gentle flex of the bicep.

Her dark and clever eyes shift over Darcy’s in the Quinjet like twin pieces of glass. The little green boy coos from his seat behind them, and Darcy takes one hand off the wheel to rest in his egg-like cradle. One small claw grips her finger and she nearly feels her heart burst with that unique affection that comes with temporarily mothering a small and strange creature such as this.

“Careful.” The word escapes her in a tone that’s somehow both soft and sharp. She doesn’t know if it’s directed at her hand in the baby’s cradle or the fact that it’s off the steering wheel at all. Still, Darcy has a hard time not watching the gentle curve of her lips around it.

“Sorry.” She clears her throat, fixing her eyes on the sky ahead. “So, um...how did Sam convince you to join up?”

It’s a lame question. She wishes there were easier, more organic ways of filling the silence. Cara smiles anyway. From here, her teeth almost look pointed on the ends.  _ Beautiful, and deadly. _

“It’s hard for me not to have somethin’ to fight for.”

This is all she offers, before a beat passes and she reaches for the auxiliary cord, plugging in her SHIELD-issued StarkPhone. The silence does not last long, before the first notes of Cara’s playlist beat against the metal and glass. Darcy might have expected her to play something punk rock, something with an unforgiving tempo and a deep and thriving bass. Instead, it’s the familiar colorful thrum of 60s bubblegum pop.

She feels her lips curve up at the corners. “Didn’t take you for a Chordettes fan.”

Cara unbuckles, rising from her seat, and for one fleeting instant, Darcy thinks she’s about to jump ship, preferring the death trap free fall of thirty thousand feet to her weak banter. Her worries are eased when Cara reaches into the cradle and pulls the child to her chest. His huge, almost bug-like eyes peer curiously up at her as she begins to bounce at the knee with the music.

“Babies like music,” she says simply. The baby’s ears flatten a little, and he gives a toothy little coo. “Especially dance-y stuff.”

Darcy hits the autopilot and unbuckles as well, sliding sideways in her seat and kicking her feet onto Cara’s. “You have a lot of experience with babies?”

She smiles again, running a thumb under the baby’s peach fuzzy chin. “I got a couple nieces and nephews. Been a while since they were babies, though.”

Cara twirls with the little one through the rest of the song. There’s something both beautiful and painful about watching this woman shift her weight so delicately with the tiny being in her arms.

When the song changes, she leans the baby against her hip and reaches toward Darcy with one fingerless gloved hand. “Come on. This one’s my favorite.”

It’s easy to see why. With The Child in one hand and using the other to turn Darcy into a spin, Cara mouths the lyrics, swaying gently from side to side.

Darcy feels drunk with the words instead.  _ Why must I be a teenager in love? _

  1. noodles



It’s a birthday tradition. You spin Natasha’s Wheel of Birthday Fortune, and whatever it lands on is where the team goes to eat. The person whose birthday it was last pays for everyone.

Darcy lands on a Mongolian barbecue place nearby that definitely can’t house the entire team.

“Your birthday, my birthday.” Poe Dameron ribs her with a good-natured smile, his handsome face a pretty disguise for the twenty-five times he and Jane have butted heads over proper procedure in the labs, when he’s not flying his jet a million miles per hour to the next mission. “You better eat light tonight, Lewis, my wallet’s lookin’ a little thin.”

“Liar,” Cara Dune snorts, and when she isn’t wearing her tac suit, her thick arms are ringed with small, patterned tattoos from her Air Force days. Darcy wonders how far up they go.

“Nobody forgot your love affair with that spaghetti platter on Finn’s birthday, Dameron,” she smiles back. “Coulson’s not around to Heimlich you this time, so if you die on a noodle, you die.”

“Hardy har har.” He slings an arm around each of their shoulders. Darcy can smell the bergamot in his deodorant. “Not that it matters, by the way, but, uh...isn’t Foster celebrating with us? She’s your best friend, I thought…” He tries to sound casual, but the trailing off midsentence doesn’t do him any favors.

Darcy grins. “Keep your pants on, flyboy, she’ll meet us there.”

Predictably, Jane and Poe argue the whole time. Over what, Darcy can’t really make heads or tails. There’s some debate about the Beatles and the Stones, but she’s long since learned to tune it out.

“Hey.” Cara nudges her with her knee, sending one fat wave of butterflies shooting up Darcy’s insides. She puts down her bowl and gulps down the mouthful of spicy beef she’d been chewing. “You, uh...remember that kid we took to the base in Chile?”

“Green, tiny, most adorable fucking thing I’ve ever seen? Yeah, I remember.”

Cara reaches into her pocket and produces a small silver medallion in the shape of what looks like a long, thin animal skeleton with tusks. “The guy that picked him up sent these over. Wanted to say thank you for looking after his kid, I guess.” She presses it into Darcy’s palm. It’s a little heavier than it looks.

“Wow...that’s so sweet of them, he really didn’t have to...huh…” She turns it over in her hand. The medallion glistens under the fluorescent lights, and she can’t help but think of the way the little alien boy had scrabbled to get a grip on her arm when Cara let her put him back into his cradle. She hadn’t wanted to let go either.

“I kinda...got you somethin’, too,” Cara admits, bringing her back to Earth. She digs into the front pocket of the small leather bag dangling off the arm of her chair to pass Dary a CD in a blank case, in black Sharpie on the front: DL BIRTHDAY MIX. The handwriting is swirly and dainty, and a small happy face rests on top of the “i” in birthday. “You know, in case I didn’t bug you enough with my tunes already.”

“I don’t think anybody’s made me a mixtape since, like...2006.” This is the English that her brain comes up with to substitute whatever gibberish would’ve come out, if her ridiculous goofy crush had been able to speak for itself. “Thank you. Cara.”

Dune smiles back gently, and pinches her chopsticks perfectly to deliver another scoop of noodles to her mouth.

  1. denial



“I haven’t seen much of you lately,” Jane says mildly. Darcy helps her hold up some part of a structure of her latest device, and while the words come out measured, she knows that Jane is a complex woman with brilliant waves and flutters constantly firing under the surface. “You been on missions?”

“Kind of.” It’s not untrue: in the last couple of weeks, she’s been to Malta, Milan, and Greenland, though most of the time she wishes she could spend sightseeing, she’s been either on the computer digging up dirt on targets or arresting them. The highlight of her missions has been the text she receives every time she boards a Quinjet for the flight home.

_ Nice work ;) see you back on base <3 _

“Made any headway with the Buff Babe?”

The blush spreads from the tips of her ears to the tip of her nose. “I don’t know. I’ve been listening to the mixtape she made, on my way to and from where I gotta be.”

Jane lifts her gaze for an infinitesimal moment, once the Einstein-Rosen doodad has been secured. “You know she likes you, like, a lot, right?”

Darcy bites her lip, a bad habit she should have kicked the first time her mother pointed it out. She wishes she could bite Cara’s - wishes she could do a lot more than bite her lip. “I don’t know. She’s just sweet. I heard she and that girl Jessika from the aerospace division were a thing.”

It’s a rumor that has long since fizzled out, she’s aware, but the last hint of denial she can cling to to abate the very real possibility of a relationship - which is one of the most terrifying things Darcy can think of.

She hasn’t been with anyone long-term, or even longer than a night or two, since Ian, all those years ago in London. And just like every relationship she’s ever had, she pushed him away when things started to get serious. She doesn’t know how not to have a messy breakup.

“You really need to figure out this block you have with letting yourself be happy, Darce. Bums me out seeing you self-flagellate.”

Like every other time Jane has these talks with her, her voice is even and balanced, calm enough to be convincing, steady enough to feel true. It drives her nuts sometimes, but she also doesn’t know where she’d be without Jane’s angel on her shoulder.

“Am I allowed to ask what’s up with you and flyboy?”

The lift of Jane’s eyebrows says what she doesn’t:  _ nice change of subject _ . “Who do you mean?”

“Poe Dameron. Boy’s on you like white on rice.”

Jane snorts. “Poe Dameron is annoying, but he’s the least of my troubles. Honestly, the kid thinks the  _ Beatles _ are more rock ‘n roll than the Stones. With that kind of logic, I’d say he’s unfit to fly an RC helicopter, let alone a goddamn Quinjet.”

“What’s that about a goddamn Quinjet?”

His ears must have been burning, Darcy thinks dully. As Poe Dameron shoulders open the door to the lab, a boyish grin across his lips, she can almost feel Jane tensing beside her for the oncoming volley.

“Jane’s never actually been on a Quinjet.” The interjection draws both of their stares. “Well, not one that was in the air.”

“You think I should take her out for a spin, Lewis?” Poe rests his elbow on a workstation, careful enough not to topple the contraption propped on it, but reckless enough that he knows it’ll bother Jane. “See if she can grab a little appreciation for my artistry?”

“Unless you’re doing skywriting all of a sudden, I don’t know I’d call it artistry, Dameron.”

“Sure it is. Same way your Einstein-Rosen rainbow things are your science-y artistry, Foster.”

Darcy knows she’ll give her a hard time for giving him this kind of ammo later, but the pink in Jane’s cheeks is well worth the trouble.

She slinks out of the lab unnoticed just as the cacophony starts.

  1. mess



It’s not the first time a mission has gone sideways.

Moff Gideon is a high-powered ex-HYDRA operative, more diplomat now than spy. After the HYDRA-SHIELD split he disappeared for a few years, surfacing in Monaco as the owner and operator of an up-and-coming entertainment venue with an underground specialty in drugs and weapons trafficking.

Darcy gets sent in with a young agent named Finn; they’re both new enough to SHIELD that Gideon won’t recognize them, hasn’t memorized their faces. Posing as an English tech tycoon and a French poet, they’re meant to weasel their way into his private card game, then take him down silently to access the actual underground tunnel system where it’s rumored he does his illicit business.

Naturally, things don’t go according to plan.

Finn would say it’s no one’s fault, but Darcy blames herself for her obvious slip: when Gideon requests that she relate her most recently published poem, she puts one accent on the wrong syllable. Gideon is sly enough not to show her mistake immediately, but once the word has escaped her lips, she feels her hackles raise. After the stuttered applause of the small room dies down, someone cuts the lights.

It takes a moment to make heads or tails of whose hands are on her - she lowers herself, drops her center of gravity, and takes whoever has their arm around her neck down with her.

Finn’s voice echoes not far off in the darkness, calling her name in between the blows she can hear landing somewhere nearby. She slips her knife out of its holster under her skirt and plunges it backward, finding a leg, biting into the flesh.

Her assailant lets go.

“Finn!”

She searches blindly through the mess of scattering celebrities, politicians, high-rollers, for her partner and friend. Finn’s voice grows more and more distant, until it fades almost completely.

The casino outside Gideon’s private room goes on with its business, oblivious to the chaos nestled right next door. She is back in public, safe in the light, but Finn is gone.

And Gideon with him.

She expects an earful from Maria Hill, hopes for it even, but the long stare of disappointment, followed by the flat command to return to base, dig their icy claws far deeper into her. They’ll prepare a rescue mission that she won’t be involved in.

Darcy shakes the urge to cry all the way back. The flight is long and lonely, and she knows if she starts, she won’t be able to stop. One mistake, one tiny slip-up, will result in Finn’s questioning and torture at best, and his death at worst.

When the Quinjet lands, Cara is there to gas it up and take over the rescue. The sad smile on her lips is sympathetic, and she reaches for Darcy’s hand as they meet in the middle.

“He was already suspicious,” Cara offers quietly, threading a strand of Darcy’s hair back behind her ear. The gentle touch brings the spike in her throat higher, higher, until it’s prickling in the corners of her eyes. “He would’ve made you no matter what.”

“I’m worried about Finn. If he dies because of me - ”

“He won’t. Finn’s a tough kid. I’ll be back with him before you know it. In the meantime, get some rest, we’ll regroup soon.”

“I’m sorry,” she chokes out miserably, wishing she could say it to Finn, and knowing it’s not nearly enough.

  1. redemption



Over the course of the next week, Darcy tries to tell herself that “traumatic injury resulting in temporary administrative leave” does not translate to “total mission failure and compromise of an actual human life.” Cara returns with Finn, both intact, three days after the incident, and he promises her that it’s not her fault - she couldn’t have stopped this, Gideon was already going to make them, everything that Cara had said in so many words.

It doesn’t stop her feeling immensely guilty.

She likes to think that her brooding face isn’t terribly obvious, but the fact that damn near everyone on base tries to cheer her up - including Poe Dameron, of all people - tells her it is.

“I  _ should _ be the most pissed,” he rambles, leaning on her desk with both hands to the wood. He’d be squeezing his cleavage together if he had tits. “Finn’s my best friend, but, Lewis, you gotta quit blamin’ yourself for this. Even Romanoff’s misfired on a mission before.”

“I could’ve gotten him killed.” She doesn’t look up from her computer, typing in the code to sift through Gideon’s offshore accounts, his aliases, anything that can help them track him down.

“But you didn’t. You kept your cool, you got out, and you set out to find more intel on Gideon. You did what you could.” His voice is as sincere as she’s ever heard it, no war with Jane to be won, no jokes to tell, no one to impress. “Come on. We’re going to The Cantina tonight. Buy the kid a drink, get your mind off things...nobody’s beatin’ up on you harder than you are.”

She pinches the bridge of her nose, the thrumming typeface on the screen in front of her beating an uneven rhythm into her temples. “Fine. I’ll come out tonight. But I’m inviting Jane, and she’s going to bail me out if I get all anxious about it.”

His smile lights up his entire face. Darcy suspects it’s got something to do with the promises of another lively argument tonight. “Fair. See you at eight.”

Darcy and Jane walk through the front door at eight-fifteen. Their tardiness is due to the volley of doubts Darcy just can’t shake, and they spend ten minutes sitting in the parking lot, discussing worst case scenarios, before they even leave the car.

Finn is the first to pull Darcy into his arms after she crosses the threshold. She holds him tight, her face in his shoulder, the smell of him warm and familiar and safe. “You’re okay,” is the first thing that comes out of her mouth in a half-watery mess. “You’re okay.”

“I’m okay,” he confirms, pulling away to leave her clinging to his jacket. “Hey. There was nothin’ you could’ve done. I talked to Hill, got things cleared up, and I  _ promise _ you, there’s nothin’ you could’ve done.”

“I’m buying you a drink anyway.” As she marches him to the counter, Cara waves, leaning back in her spot at the booth, an arm slung over the back of the seats like an invitation. Darcy musters up a smile, looping an arm through Jane’s before Poe’s teasing can sink its teeth in her. “Two tequila shots and…”

“An IPA,” Jane finishes, giving Darcy’s hand a squeeze in thanks. “Hey, we’re...really glad to have you back, Finn.”

“I’m glad to be back. Thanks for tolerating Poe without me.”

Jane rolls her eyes. “Who said I tolerated him?”

The music is loud enough that they can toast each other over the middle of the table, but thankfully nobody feels the need to place too much spotlight on Finn’s rescue. Instead, the gossip veers in its usual direction: who Fury’s mystery woman is, which agents got caught in a compromising position in the conference room, where Tony Stark has spirited Pepper Potts away to this weekend.

Darcy pretends not to notice Cara’s arm pressing gently against the back of her neck, and pretends not to lean into her body the more tequila she and Finn drink.

Around eleven, the group devolves into a rousing game of Never Have I Ever.

“Never have I ever...willingly eaten sushi,” Jane volunteers, her gaze sliding to the right to see what the hell Poe Dameron has to say about it.

“Christ on a cracker, Foster, we need to bring you some culture.” With his usual air of exasperation, he reaches around and pulls her closer. Darcy half-expects her to punch him lightly, like she usually would, but Jane laughs instead, resting her temple to his shoulder. “Okay. Never have I ever...hooked up with someone  _ at  _ work.”

Jane and Finn each put a finger down. Poe shifts his line of sight between each of them, one incredulous eyebrow raised.

“Thor.” Jane shrugs. “But my answer also depends on your definition of ‘hooked up.’”

“True.” A devilish smile pulls at Darcy’s lips. “Is it just kissing, or does it have to move into touching, or if it’s touching-inclusive, does it have to be under the clothes or does over the clothes count? How many bases?”

After thinking about it for a moment and physically stroking his chin, Poe comes up with, “Over the clothes touching.”

Jane and Finn both keep their fingers down, and Darcy and Cara each put one down as well. Poe shakes his head as he lifts his beer to his lips.

“Fuckin’ pervs.”

Jane gives him a teasing pat on the cheek. “Don’t be jealous, Dameron, we’ll find someone to grope you in the cockpit.”

Darcy swears, the look he gives her when she says this should be considered indecent exposure. “Don’t look too hard.”

While Finn excuses himself to the bathroom to give those two a damn moment, Cara shifts out of her seat, her warm hand covering Darcy’s. “Come on. Dance with me.”

She pulls her out of the booth, their feet clumsily carrying them to the dance floor, a Journey song wafting through the air. There are a few couples already in each other’s arms, mostly older folks, but nobody looks up when Cara pulls Darcy close, her hands cautious at the small of her back.

She’s beautiful in the soft light of the bar, but then, she’s beautiful in any light. Darcy lets the brazenness of the tequila on her tongue press her palm to the back of Cara’s neck. A thin pink flush fills both of their cheeks.

“Are you feeling better?” Cara asks her, in a voice so husky it should be illegal. Her eyes are dark but warm, smiling before her lips.

“A little. I...to be honest, I want to ask you about the mission, but…”

“It can wait.” She lifts her finger, the tip of her pinky sliding across a drop of tequila on Darcy’s lower lip. “You had time to listen to that CD yet?”

She’s played it almost every morning since her birthday, during her hair and makeup routine, but she’s not about to tell Cara that. “I have. I really liked that one song, the, uh...Paloma Faith one, I think?”

At last the smile reaches Cara’s perfect white teeth in the darkness. “It must’ve been a deadly kiss,” she sings softly, probably squeezing Darcy’s heart to absolute bits.

Darcy chews on her lip, dropping her chin to her chest. “You know I’m crazy about you, don’t you?”

Cara takes her hand off Darcy’s waist and brings it to her chin to meet her eyes again. “I didn’t know, but I’d hoped so.”

When they finally kiss, it tastes like lime, salt, and a flowery something Darcy’s never tasted before.

  1. a new hope



Darcy ties her hair back into a messy bun, probably flecking it the same brick red as the paint in the can at her feet. Cara has appeared in the front door of their new house, her flannel shirt pushed up to the elbows, cradling their landline to her ear.

“Babe, what time do you want me picking up the cake on Saturday? Party starts at four, but the fridge’ll be full of all the appetizers and snacks and stuff beforehand, so I’m thinking I’ll cut out around four fifteen, then jet back so it doesn’t melt.”

“Four fifteen’s perfect. Thank you.” She blows a kiss before bending down to coat her brush in paint again and stripe the outer walls of the house in red.

She hears Cara rattle off the information to the bakery in perfect memorization: ginger spice cake with fresh lime and rum buttercream frosting. Jane has been craving Cuban mules this entire pregnancy, and this is the closest Darcy’s willing to compromise to feeding her actual booze. Poe has sworn off alcohol during the last eight months in solidarity, and he’s been patient enough that Darcy plans on feeding him margaritas under the table at the baby shower.

Meanwhile, Cara has been poking her in the stomach every morning since Darcy proposed and keeps asking when they can have a little green alien of their own. Darcy laughs every time, reminding her there might be a little more of a process to obtaining a baby for them than for Jane and Poe.

She fingers the small medallion on her necklace, the silver skull cool on her skin. It feels like centuries since their first mission together, and yet there’s something new and beautiful to discover about her future wife every day.

Cara comes up from behind her when the front of the house is about three-quarters finished, and wraps her arms around Darcy’s waist. “Hill just called. I’m shipping out to Chile on Tuesday to visit our current favorite baby.”

She feels herself smile, with Cara’s nose nuzzling into her neck. “Am I allowed to send you with cookies for Din and the kid?”

“Always, babe.” Cara nips her earlobe, then turns Darcy in her arms to face her. “You regret retiring from fieldwork yet?”

“Nah.” She slides her fingers through Cara’s belt loops, letting her hands wander to the seat of her shorts. “Full-time hackin’ ain’t so bad. Gives me time to plan baby showers, bake a little more, get to know the neighbors…”

“Sounds like you’re training for the PTA, Darcy Lewis.” Cara plants a languid kiss on her lips, her tongue creasing the line of Darcy’s mouth. She lets her in, lets the firm hand on her ass draw a moan from the back of her throat. Darcy pulls away first, slowly, resting her forehead to Cara’s as a tender smile rises to her face.

“Marry me first,  _ then  _ we can train for the PTA.”

Cara kisses her again, backing her through the front door and kicking it shut behind her. The paint and brushes lie forgotten on the front lawn. “Deal.”

**Author's Note:**

> PS: They're totally asking Finn to be their sperm donor, when they're ready :)


End file.
